bidkev
Newbie
A newbie so bear with me.
I had a "world radio" eons ago as a kid which was about the size of a boom box.............just an "everyday" portable (if you could manage to carry it) back then that allowed me to pick up some weird and wonderful stations including aircraft, police etc.simply by pressing a button and turning a dial but the modern stes and settings are all new to me.
I'm an old fart of 69 who decided to relive his childhood ;-) so after much research, I opted for the PL 880. I've spent hours................no days with it but I can only receive 2 am stations and can pick up nothing on SW other than buzz/hiss. I've tried the whip and I also have a random wire of around 100ft that helped pick up 2 faint intelligible stations beneath the noise. I've tried all bandwidths and get nothing in SW or longwave.........not even any noise in longwave just silence. I've tried Local, Normal and DX but nothing!
It's been raining hard here for 3 days and set to continue for another 5 so I've had no chance to get up in the mountains (where I camp and intend to use it) or even just out to an open space. All my testing has been done oputdoors under the pergola away from as much interference as possible though.
After that long winded explanation my question is this: My house backs onto a railway line and the overhead wires are only about 70 metres away. Could this be my problem, am I missing something, or have I got a defective set? It has the latest software. What would be my best settings to test the SW band?
Excuse me if my question is just too general for specific answers but I really want to love this radio after having such wonderful results with FM. I'm in Australia and I know that there is an Aussie section to this forum but I thought my question is not really region specific so I posted here. FM is brilliant reception BTW and I am very happy with the speaker repro
I had a "world radio" eons ago as a kid which was about the size of a boom box.............just an "everyday" portable (if you could manage to carry it) back then that allowed me to pick up some weird and wonderful stations including aircraft, police etc.simply by pressing a button and turning a dial but the modern stes and settings are all new to me.
I'm an old fart of 69 who decided to relive his childhood ;-) so after much research, I opted for the PL 880. I've spent hours................no days with it but I can only receive 2 am stations and can pick up nothing on SW other than buzz/hiss. I've tried the whip and I also have a random wire of around 100ft that helped pick up 2 faint intelligible stations beneath the noise. I've tried all bandwidths and get nothing in SW or longwave.........not even any noise in longwave just silence. I've tried Local, Normal and DX but nothing!
It's been raining hard here for 3 days and set to continue for another 5 so I've had no chance to get up in the mountains (where I camp and intend to use it) or even just out to an open space. All my testing has been done oputdoors under the pergola away from as much interference as possible though.
After that long winded explanation my question is this: My house backs onto a railway line and the overhead wires are only about 70 metres away. Could this be my problem, am I missing something, or have I got a defective set? It has the latest software. What would be my best settings to test the SW band?
Excuse me if my question is just too general for specific answers but I really want to love this radio after having such wonderful results with FM. I'm in Australia and I know that there is an Aussie section to this forum but I thought my question is not really region specific so I posted here. FM is brilliant reception BTW and I am very happy with the speaker repro